Verdi: La zingara
Meagan Sill and Will Crutchfield
This is another of the songs for which Verdi used texts by Manfredo Maggioni, the expat who supplied verses, music, instruction, and translation to the thriving London market for all things Italian. For more about Maggioni, see Il poveretto. “La zingara” translates as “The Gypsy Girl,” and conveys uncritically the stereotype of a fun-loving, carefree, rootless spirit. In 21st-century terms, it involves some amount of “cultural appropriation” and certainly fails to acknowledge the discrimination and persecution endured by the traveling Roma people.
Problematic art due for cancellation, or harmless artifact of another era’s outgrown habits of thought? At the moment, the musical community is in lively discussion of such questions, and consistent resolution of them (what to do with Carmen? Il trovatore? Der Zigeunerbaron? The Diary of One Who Vanished?) is a far from settled matter. While we wait, Verdi’s music is as fresh and lively as the text is naive.
La zingara, frontispiece from first edition
Chi padre mi fosse,
Invano la gente
Del primo mai seppi,
La terra che un fiore,
Dovunque il destino
Io trovo un sorriso,
Perchè del passato
Se l'ora presente
Può, è vero, il domani
Dell'aure serene
Ma s'oggi risplende
Perchè rattristarmi
Io sono una pianta
Che tutto disfida
Se fronda qui cade,
In ogni stagione
qual patria mi sia,
chiamando mi va.
ed è patria mia
che un frutto mi dà.
m'addita un sentiero,
io trovo un amor.
darommi pensiero,
è lieta al mio cor?
un torbido velo
l'aspetto turbar.
azzurro il mio cielo,
d'un dubbio avvenir?
che ghiaccio non spoglia
del verno il rigor.
là un'altra germoglia,
son carca di fior.
Who my father or homeland might be,
everyone asks me in vain.
I never knew the former, and my home
is whatever soil gives me fruit or flower!
Wherever destiny shows me a path,
I find a smile; I find a love.
Why give myself a thought of the past
if the present hour is happy to my heart?
It’s true, tomorrow a murky cloud
could disturb the placid sky.
But if the heaven shines blue today,
why worry about a doubtful future?
I am a plant that frost cannot denude,
that defies completely the harsh winter.
If a leaf falls here, another blooms there;
in every season, I’m loaded with flowers!